Road Builders Get Butterfly Guide

 

Roadside slopes and edge plantings can help conserve butterflies and other wildlife as they are an opportunity to provide suitable breeding habitats for many species, and provide crucial links between the patches of habitat that remain.

The Butterfly Handbook encourages engineers and landscape architects to include features and plants that will encourage wildlife. The handbook has been co-published by English Nature and the Highways Agency. In the handbook’s foreword, Dr Martin Warren, chief executive of Butterfly Conservation charity, said: “This report is extremely valuable and timely as it concerns an increasingly important habitat for butterflies and other insects.

“We all know that roads often destroy habitat, break it up into bits and cause pollution, but if designed properly you can create habitat corridors that are really good for wildlife.” The publication offers guidance on habitat sizes, species’ locations, breeding areas and colonization patterns.